Disable Annoying Windows Web Search

July 23, 2015

In another attempt to Apple, Microsoft allows users to search not only their computer’s hard drive, but also the Web at the same time.  This is a direct copy of Apple OS’s Spotlight Search, but unlike Apple, Windows’s increased search parameters are annoying. Windows users can disable this supposed “helpful” feature and GHacks has the directions to do it: “How To Disable Web Search In Windows 10’s Start Menu.”

Apple’s Spotlight Search does pretty much the same thing, but it categorizes results into organized categories and does not search the entire Web, only Wikipedia, iTunes, and preselected search engines.  Microsoft has the tendency to go overboard and that usually equals slow response time.  The article mentions the Windows 10 search results are also:

“I will never use the search for a couple of reasons. First, I don’t need it there as I want local files and settings to be returned exclusively when I run a search on Windows 10. Second, the suggestions are too generic most of the time and third, since a browser is open all the time on my system, I can run a search using it as well without having to add another step to the process.”

The good news is that the Web search feature can be disabled, but it is not available to all users.  Does that surprise you?  Microsoft has the tendency to release OS’s without fully fixing all the bugs.  Windows 10 appears to be better than prior releases, but little bugs like this make it annoying.

Whitney Grace, July 23, 2015

Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph

 

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